One of the favorite terms that is thrown around by conservatives to describe Barack Obama is the word “Dictator.”

Is this just more hyperbole or is there a good case of truth in naming here?

Obama is scrapping our Constitution, moving towards a type of government our forefathers not only loathed but also warned us against. This is a government with a strong, central chief executive.

Obama’s blatant disregard of the law made another appearance this week as Obama decided he did not like the Welfare Reforms that were signed into law in the 1990’s.

These reforms were very successful in getting people off of the welfare rolls and getting them back to work.

Obama did not like this so what does he do? He did what he always does. He ignores the law.

Prior to the 1990s, welfare was easy and expansive. People could live endlessly on welfare and make no attempt to get off of it. The Welfare reforms on the 1990’s required that welfare recipients work.

Wham! Just like that a law enacted by Congress and signed by another President is set aside. Yes, it remains on the books, but it is effectively gone.

In dictatorships, Dictators make decisions and rule by decree. In a Republic, the legislature makes laws and the executive simply carries them out.

Not in the world of Obamaland. Now, in the People’s Republic of Obama, the Constitution no longer matters. If Obama does not want his top people to be confirmed by the Senate, he simply declares them Czars and puts them into positions without bothering to send them to the Senate for confirmation. He does not like the Defense of Marriage Act, he declares it unconstitutional and says he will not defend it from legal challenges.

Obama’s favorite mantra when he speaks to his adoring faithful is, “we can’t wait.” That’s his excuse. The legislative branch has the good sense to stop his stupid ideas. He does not like it so instead of compromising, he simply imposes by fiat.

Anyone remember when the Republicans went to the White House in 2009 and complained about Obama’s agenda? He simply announced, “I won.”

That is Obama. I won therefore I can do what I want.

In the last 70 years, almost all Presidents have tried to expand the power of the Presidency. Obama is not simply trying to expand the powers of the Presidency. He is trying to make it, not one of three coequal branches of government, but the dominant branch of government to which all must bow down before.

Barack Obama is the most dangerous man ever to have stepped into the Oval Office. If the GOP goes ahead and nominates Romney we will have a Republican candidate who will probably not expand the powers that Obama assumed but also will do nothing to roll them back to their Constitutional limits either.

For those of us who are baby boomers, we grew up in the greatest, freest nation this world has ever known. Now it is our freedom that may soon be on the endangered species list.

SB 1070 is the name of the bill in Arizona that created a very strong anti-illegal immigrant law. The usual anti-American, open borders crowd screamed and the Obama regime, ever diligent in its duty to make America safe for anyone but Americans and doing its best to destroy this nation, filed suit.

A hearing was held in front of a Federal Judge in Arizona who issued a restraining order blocking the implementation of most parts of SB 1070. The Judge who issued the injunction blocking the law was not surprisingly a Clinton appointee.

The case then went to the 9th Circuit or as is sometimes called, the 9th Circus Court of Appeals. In a 2-1 decision, the 9th Circuit upheld the decision of the Judge in Arizona. The 9th Circuit is often called the 9th Circus court because some of its rulings are very bizarre and it is the most reversed Circuit Court in the United States.

Elana Kagan, who should have recused herself in the Obamacare litigation, has recused herself in this case so there are only 8 Justices hearing the case.

The case itself is huge for several reasons, not the least of which is the 10th Amendment concerns.

Arizona has argued that it has the right to enforce certain immigration laws because the Federal Government is refusing to do so. Most real Americans believe the Federal Government should secure the border.

The ranchers in Arizona, American citizens believe that should happen. Many cannot even leave their homes, because if they leave only for a couple of days, everything they own will be pillaged. The border area is not safe as ranchers have had their property destroyed and even been murdered.

Drug cartel violence has spilled over the border with kidnappings and murders. While the victims of these crimes are usually illegals and often have ties to the drug cartels, it is only a matter of time before this spills over and real Americans start getting hurt.

If you need any proof that Obama hates America, the border issue should answer that question.

This does not even deal with the issue of amnesty, or the quantity of immigrations into this nation. This deals with a real national security issue.

Our border is so open, it defies logic to think that Islamic terror groups have not smuggled terrorists and weapons through the open border. Americans who want to visit certain national parks in Arizona now must do so with armed guards because of the drug cartels.

America basically does not control part of our territory any more. Part of America is now controlled by a hostile power.

This is what Obama wants.

The people of Arizona only want to live in safety. That will never happen as long as Obama is in the Oval Office.

Vice President Joe Biden last year earned $20,900 in rental income from the Secret Service, which is paying him to host agents on his property so they can protect him.

Most high-profile people in need of protection pay people to keep them safe. Government officials are allowed to have taxpayers pick up the tab. Biden is unique in that he actually gets paid by his bodyguards for the right to protect him.

Biden’s tax records list rental income of $20,900 from a “cottage” on is property, which is reportedly being leased by the Secret Service and paid for at a rate that could earn him even more money next year.

Biden took deductions for mortgage interest and taxes that allowed him to report only $12,653 of the amount on his federal tax return.

Of course, the Bidens badly need the money. They only had an adjusted gross income of $379,035 last year. This probably also explains why they gave less than 1.5 percent of their income to charity.

Of course, Biden was not the genius that came up with this scheme. Everyone should realize that. Biden is not bright enough.

This scheme was pioneered by none other than Bill and Hillary Clinton. In 2000, when the Clintons left the White House and moved her to New York so she could be a Senator, they wanted to find a way to pay their house note, which ran about $12,000 a month.

As a former President and First Lady, they were entitled to lifetime protection from the Secret Service. So they answer came to them.

The Clintons had a small building on their property; so they charged rent to the Secret Service of, wait you guessed it. $12000 a month.

Of course, Joe Biden is a financial idiot. After all of his years in government service, his net worth is estimated to be somewhere between -$209,000 and $734,000.

This guy has been in government for 40 years drawing a fairly significant salary. He has virtually nothing to show for it. His wife has been a college teacher for thirty years and she has nothing to show for it.

Even Barack Obama figured the game out quickly and with only a few years in government service, he is a multimillionaire.

The fact that Joe Biden has had anything to do with the financial state of this nation is not only terrifying; it explains why we are in such a hole.

And if you ever want proof Barack Obama was worried he might be declared ineligible to be president, look no further than Joe Biden.

It should give every American nightmares to think this clown is only one heartbeat from the Oval Office.

After years of hearing liberals tell us that any criticism of President Obama is because he is Black, it seems to me they ought to admit that he got elected because he is Black. In the interest of accuracy, he is half-Black and half-White. I say this because the media has now begun calling the shooter of Mayvon Martin a “White-Hispanic.”

Beyond that, it was apparent to anyone watching and listening to Barack Obama that a moron was running for office; one willing to say anything for five minute’s advantage. He literally lied his way into the Oval Office.

One need only revisit Obama’s campaign and his first year in office to grasp how audacious his capacity for lying was and is.

In June 2008 he was boasting that he was “the only candidate who isn’t taking a dime from Washington lobbyists” at the same time his fundraising team included 38 members of law firms that had earned $138 million to lobby the federal government. He had 79 “bundlers”, five of them billionaires, who tapped their personal networks to raise at least $200,000 each.

On October 24, 2008, Charles Krauthammer wrote “First, I will have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory.” Columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, on October 31, 2008, wrote “If Barack Obama is not a Socialist, he does the best imitation of one I’ve ever seen.” So, yes, we were warned and, yes, a majority of voters refused to acknowledge the obvious.

An editorial in the January 8, 2009 Daily Mail, a British daily, characterized Obama’s ascent to power as a “Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality” adding that it was a victory for Hollywood, for “a man who is no friend of freedom”, “a victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than family” and presciently, “a victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation.”

Following his election Obama was being either ignorant or deliberately lying when he told a November 2008 Governor’s Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles that “Few challenges facing America—and the world—are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought, spreading famine and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.”

Not one single word of this was true and, a year later in 2009, a cache of emails between so-called climate scientists revealed that global warming was a hoax based on phony computer models Moreover, a perfectly natural warming cycle had already ended in 1998!

Is there anyone who does not know that Obama’s stimulus plan turned out to be a massive and costly failure? The answer is yes and some of them will vote for Obama in November. Lenin called them “useful idiots.”

By February 2009, Bradley R. Schiller, a professor of economics, writing in The Wall Street Journal wrote “President Barack Obama has turned fear-mongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package. This fear-mongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics.”

As voters ready themselves to vote in November, it would be wise to revisit the way Obama hid his true past from them in 2008 and since. His college records were sealed, his Indonesian adoption records were sealed, his passport file was sealed and, of course, his official birth records were sealed. He has since provided a birth certificate that an investigation by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio recently asserted was a complete forgery. His first executive order in office was to put these and other documents off limits to public examination.

As 2009 came to a close, virtually all of Obama’s initiatives were in shambles, not the least of which was his foreign policy and, in particular, his Middle East policy. He alienated Israel and the Arab League refused to provide any kind of peace gesture. Despite efforts to soften the public perception of Palestinians, they are still shelling Israel with rockets from Gaza.

By the time 2009 was history, Obama had given the Queen of England an iPod preloaded with 40 show tunes, bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, praised Marxists Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chavez, announced he would meet the Iranians with no pre-conditions, announced the termination of the U.S. space program the day after the North Koreans tested an intercontinental ballistic missile, wanted to try CIA agents on charges of torturing terrorists, wanted a civil trial for the mastermind of 9/11, and wanted to shut down Guantanamo. He put a card-carrying Communist and admitted tax cheats part of his administration, and that’s just the short list!

In lieu of the likelihood that Obamacare, to which he devoted his first year in office, will be struck down by the Supreme Court, his open microphone gaff in which he urged the Russians to wait until he is reelected so he can give them more U.S. missile technology secrets and reduce our nuclear arsenal, and countless other deceptions, Wall Street Journal columnist, Peggy Noonan, described his tete-a-tete with Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev as “creepy.”

“What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who’s not operating in good faith,” wrote Noonan.

As millions of Americans still struggle with unemployment, the rolls of Food Stamp recipients grow, the mortgage crisis continues, gas prices increase, and much of the world holds Obama in contempt, the lies just keep coming, the class and race warfare is being ramped up, and media chatteratti continue to talk up his chances of being reelected.

President’s effort to shore up energy strategy not going down well

President Obama noticed spiraling gasoline prices have opened a hole in his bid for a second term in the White House large enough to drive a fuel tanker through. American voters ought not to let the president fill that void with lame excuses or empty promises. There’s only one way to prove his leadership for another four years will pull gas costs back from the red zone: Let the oil flow.

Prices at the pump have soared to near-record levels, now averaging $3.84 a gallon nationwide. GOP presidential candidates have correctly laid blame at the Oval Office door. Mr. Obama has fired back that there’s “no silver bullet” that will bring down gas prices. Sticking to his guns, he lobbied Democratic senators earlier this month to block Republican efforts to resurrect the proposed 1,700 mile Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have supplied the United States with 700,000 barrels of Canadian crude a day.

The “no silver bullet” argument has proved to be a dud, however, as polls show Americans overwhelmingly blame the president for expensive gas. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the way he is handling this pocketbook issue.

The president has boasted that domestic oil production has risen since he took office in 2009 but fails to mention that operations on private lands are responsible for the increase. The amount of petroleum extracted from federal lands – under White House jurisdiction – actually fell 13 percent in 2011, according to the Institute for Energy Research. Tumbling in tandem is oil yield from the Gulf of Mexico, dropping from a third of the nation’s total to a quarter since Mr. Obama clamped down on offshore drilling following the 2010 BP oil spill. His overall approval rating likewise has skidded 9 points in the past month to a dismal 41 percent, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News survey.

Mr. Obama has taken to charging that his GOP presidential challengers act as if they can wave “a magic wand” and provide an endless supply of cheap gas. Meanwhile, he has conjured some magic of his own, pressuring Saudi Arabia to sell the United States more petroleum, and the kingdom has responded by boosting shipments by 25 percent since the beginning of the year. Increased supply is meant to lower gas prices by easing oil-market jitters over potential disruptions arising from Iran’s nuclear program. So far, it hasn’t worked.

During his Saturday radio address, Mr. Obama vilified Big Oil and urged Congress to end its annual tax breaks worth $4 billion: “Your member of Congress should be fighting for you, not for big financial firms. Not for big oil companies.” Killing the tax deductions would only make gas even costlier as companies pass along the costs to consumers.

Inhibiting domestic oil production and increasing energy dependency on unfriendly regimes consigns the nation to persistent economic hardship. It doesn’t take a wizard to divine what polls are saying: If you want a second term, put down the magic wand, drilling bans and green fantasies. Let the free market provide affordable gas.

I received a campaign letter from Michelle Obama the other day. This is especially surprising because I am a registered Republican; hardly a likely prospect to contribute to her husband’s reelection efforts.

“Every day I learn about the challenges and the struggles—the doctor bills they can’t pay or the mortgage they can no longer afford,” said the text. The “fairness” theme, a socialist meme, was expressed. “American prospers when we are all in this together, when hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded, when everyone—from Main Street to Wall Street—does their fair share and plays by the same rules.”

The fact is, however, America has not been prospering for the last four years during which Barack Obama has been President. And everyone knows it. The U.S. sovereign debt rating was downgraded for the first time while he occupied the Oval Office. Federal spending (25% of GDP) is the highest since World War Two. Federal debt (67% of GDP) is the highest since just after the end of World War Two, and the nation has experienced, not only the longest recession, but the highest unemployment since the 1930s.

In the first nineteen months of his time in office, Obama added more federal debt than was amassed by all U.S. Presidents from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

I have two theories about the November 6 election. (1) That it will be an overwhelming defeat for Obama or (2) that it will be so close we could see a situation comparable to the Bush-Kerry election in 2004. Had Kerry won, the vice president would have been John Edwards who was carrying on an affair during that campaign and who currently faces jail for misuse of campaign funds.

Obama’s Achilles’ heel is, of course, Obamacare. As Robert Bluey of The Heritage Foundation notes, recent polls indicate that 53% of Americans favor repeal and more than half (57%) say that the Supreme Court should strike it down as unconstitutional. Fully 60% of physicians believe the law will have a negative impact on overall patient care.

The Congressional Budget Office revisited Obamacare this past week and concluded that 20 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored health benefits and 49 million more Americans could become dependent on government-sponsored health care. Projecting through 2022, Obamacare could cost as much as $2.134 billion and the employer-mandate penalties could hit $221 billion.

There’s another reason why Michelle Obama was writing to me last week. As Karl Rove noted in a Wall Street Journal March 14 commentary, “Many of Mr. Obama’s 2008 donors are reluctant to give again” to his campaign. “As the Obama campaign itself reported, fewer than 7% of 2008 donors renewed their support in the first quarter of his re-election campaign, well below the typical renewal rate.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee are burning through current donations so fast that the White House has told this year’s congressional candidates that they will not receive any funding support for their campaigns because Obama needs all the money.

While Obama’s 2012 campaign is already showing signs of stress, other issues will impose great pressure. Unemployment affects most American families either directly or because some member of the family or a friend is unemployed. Even the unemployed vote!

The price of gasoline continues to rise and there is nothing the White House can do to reduce it. Releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that exists for use only in an emergency will not do it and Americans are well aware that this administration has opposed or thwarted every effort to drill for more oil on federal lands. The failures of “green energy” companies that have cost Americans billions in loan guarantees are well known. A President who hypes “algae” as an energy solution will be seen as a fool and/or a complete charlatan.

Recent polls indicate how close the 2012 election may be. Obama has lost ground among female voters. In a head-to-head match-up with Mitt Romney, women voters back Obama 49%, but that is seven points lower than 2008. A Rasmussen poll found that 59% of likely voters asked whether Obama is more liberal or more conservative than they are answered that he was more liberal. Of these likely voters, 65% who are also union members thought Obama was more liberal than themselves.

Polling firms have been asking Americans to self identify themselves as conservative or liberal for decades. In February 2012, Gallup polling revealed “that in every single state with the exception of Massachusetts” conservatives outnumbered liberals. The Battleground Poll conducted by George Washington University in collaboration with Democrat and Republican polling organizations found that 58% of Americans described themselves as “very conservative” or “somewhat conservative”, while only 37% described themselves as “very liberal” or “somewhat liberal.”

A conservative campaign message will win in 2012 and this explains why the Republican primaries are all about candidates striving to describe themselves as a “true conservative.”

Even the mainstream media show indications of less Obama support. When even The Washington Post rejects Obama’s lies about U.S. oil reserves, as it did on March 15th, it suggests there may be a growing, wider level of disenchantment with the man they embraced in 2008.

Obama will lose in November. It may be a very close election or it may be an overwhelming rejection, but the polling numbers and the state of the economy will be the deciding factors.

Memo to Michelle Obama: The “fairness” message is not working. The appalling failures—“stimulus” anyone?—of Obama’s first term will ensure that there will be no second term.

New law protecting officials from hearing criticism is unconstitutional

The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression; and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable proximity to those of like mind and to government officials, so as to make your opinions known to them.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes all three freedoms as stemming from our humanity. So, what happens if you can speak freely, but the government officials at whom your speech is aimed refuse to hear you? And what happens if your right to associate and to petition the government is confined to areas where those of like mind and the government are not present? This is coming to a street corner near you.

Certain rights, such as thought, privacy and travel, can be exercised on their own. You don’t need the government to cooperate with you; you just need to be left alone. Other rights, including those intended to influence the political process, require that the government not resist your exercise of them. Remember the old one-liner from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make any noise? Here’s the contemporary version of that: If you can criticize the government, but it refuses to hear you, does your exercise of the freedom of speech have any value?

When the framers of the Constitution wrote the First Amendment, they lived in a society in which anyone could walk up to George Washington, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson on a public street and say directly to them whatever one wished. They never dreamed of a regal force of armed agents keeping public officials away from the public, as we have today. And they never imagined that it could be a felony for anyone to congregate in public within earshot or eyesight of certain government officials. Yet, today in America, it is.

Last week, President Obama signed into law the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. This law permits Secret Service agents to designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association and petition of the government are prohibited. It permits the Secret Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech.

Thus, federal agents whose work is to protect public officials and their friends may prohibit the speech and the gatherings of folks who disagree with those officials or permit the speech and the gatherings of those who would praise them, even though the First Amendment condemns content-based speech discrimination by the government. The new law also provides that anyone who gathers in a “restricted” area may be prosecuted. Because the statute does not require the government to prove intent, a person accidentally in a restricted area can be charged and prosecuted, as well.

Permitting people to express publicly their opinions to the president only at a time and in a place and manner such that he cannot hear them violates the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to useful speech – unheard political speech is politically useless. The same may be said of the rights to associate and to petition. If peaceful public assembly and public expression of political demands on the government can be restricted to places where government officials cannot be confronted, then those rights, too, have been neutered.

Political speech is in the highest category of protected speech. This is not about drowning out the president in the Oval Office. This is about letting him know what we think of his work when he leaves the White House. This is speech intended to influence the political process.

This abominable legislation enjoyed overwhelming support from both political parties in Congress because the establishment loves power, fears dissent and hates inconvenience, and it doesn’t give a damn about the Constitution. It passed the Senate by unanimous consent, and just three members of the House voted against it. The president signed it in secret. It is more typical of contemporary China than America. It is more George III than George Washington.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to assure open, wide, robust, uninhibited political debate – debate that can be seen and heard by those it seeks to challenge and influence, whether it is convenient for them or not. Anything short of that turns the First Amendment into a mirage.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst on Fox News Channel. He is author of “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom” (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

“In negotiation, ‘yes’ is the worst word. It just betrays a fear of failure and a fear of losing this deal, and it primes you to please the other side, to rush ahead, to compromise early and often to come to a deal, any deal. ‘No’ is the best word. It’s what you want to be prepared to say and to hear. ‘No’ will liberate you and protect you.”

The above is the opening paragraph of the introduction to a book by my friend, Jim Camp, “No, The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home” and, for the forthcoming election, Americans or at least a majority of the voters have to say “no” to four more years of Barack Obama.

Camp, the creator of the Camp Negotiation Institute, has more than twenty years of experience and these days is coaching people from America to Brazil, China to Italy, Argentina to England, France to Russia, Sweden to Iraq; all of whom are seeking to become certified negotiators using his system.

Camp emphasizes the role of emotion in negotiations and what I am witnessing these days is a totally dispirited and depressed Republican and conservative voter community when, in fact, it should be energized by the dreadful prospect of a reelected Obama.

Regarding the conduct of negotiation Camp says, “’No’ will liberate you and protect you.”

Part of it the Grand Funk GOP that is occurring is unquestionably tied to the lengthy primary process, the fluctuations between the rising and falling fortunes of the candidates, and the horse race coverage by the mainstream media.

Camp emphasizes that “’No’ requires a solid, ironclad mission and purpose.” Can there be a single purpose greater than ridding the nation of the worst President in its history?

And isn’t every election a negotiation between the candidate and the voter?

Last week’s results of the polling by the Rasmussen organization found the following:

# 60% say that the U.S. economy is in Recession.

# 52% favor candidates who would raise taxes on the rich.

#46% say it’s possible for any American to find a job.

#46% say America’s best days are in the past.

In short, Republicans and other voters are all over the place trying to figure out what is happening and what may happen in the future. They are bouncing back and forth between emotions that are either pessimistic or unrealistic.

“Before you make a decision,” says Camp, “your emotions rage all over the place. Then when you make a decision, you set about rationalizing it.” This is a perfect description of what I hear from people trying to make up their minds about who the Republican nominee should be to lead the party.

The fear in the hearts of too many Republicans is driving them to seek the perfect candidate, something that never was and never will be. All politicians seeking the nomination arrive with all manner of baggage from their years in office. Some are conservative and some are too conservative.

By any rational standard, a completely unknown candidate should not have defeated John McCain, but Barack Obama offered not policies, but pure emotion based on “hope and change.” In the midst of a financial crisis, it worked.

The same fear that drove the 2008 campaign is now driving the 2012 campaign, but Obama has little to campaign upon. Rationally, we know he has mired the nation in debt that threatens an economic collapse.

We know his “stimulus” program and its promise of higher employment has been a total failure. We know that millions are still unemployed. Millions are on food stamps.

We know that Obamacare is now less popular than when it was passed against much vocal opposition; the first time that has ever happened to a piece of social legislation.

So why are Republicans in such disarray, in such a great funk over the process by which we pick nominees? EMOTION.

Republicans need to ask themselves who will say “no” to Obama and “no” to the nation-crushing changes he and his administration have imposed on us. Republicans, independents, and all conservatives have to get over their funk and get into the fight to save America.

In 2008 the voters gave the Oval Office to a man who Rush Limbaugh and others mockingly called “the messiah” for his grandiose rhetoric and promises of change. If the first two primaries are any indication, Republican Party voters seem to be looking for their own messiah, a perfect candidate, and no such person exists.

Republicans have to stop seeking their own “messiah” in 2012. Most importantly, the six percent that Rasmussen Reports says are ready to vote for a third party candidate, if one emerges, have got to get their heads screwed on tighter because that’s a margin that could keep Obama in office for four more years. Additionally, Rasmussen reports that 53% believe Mitt Romney is the GOP candidate to defeat Obama.

In recent Wall Street Journal commentary, “Romney Wins but Takes a Beating”, columnist Peggy Noonan wrote “The Iowa results almost perfectly reflect the Republican Party, which, roughly speaking, is split into three parts—libertarians, social conservatives and moderate conservatives,” adding, “there’s no denying the Republicans are in a brawl, and it is becoming ferocious.”

I put the ugly tone of the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries squarely at the feet of Newt Gingrich. Angry, resentful, and eager for revenge over his loss in Iowa, Gingrich was still smarting from the attack ads aimed at him. He revealed an aspect of his personality well known from his days as Speaker of the House in the 1990s.

Rick Santorum did well in Iowa, but he brings a holier-than-thou approach to the campaign with his religion-based approach to various social issues. It’s not so much that I disagree with his positions, but there are a lot of independents who do not necessary go to church every Sunday.

Michele Bachmann’s strident tone didn’t help her much and Rick Perry’s punch-drunk approach to campaigning didn’t either. I worry that Ron Paul will try the third party route. At present, he will never get the nomination and his base is a bunch of boys and girls barely out of their adolescence. No Republican grownup takes Paul’s views seriously, nor should they. Jon Huntsman is a spoiled rich kid, a fellow Mormon, who seems to have a personal grudge against Romney.

Talking about Mormons, I am old enough to recall all the talk about John F. Kennedy having been a Catholic and how that would hurt him. It didn’t. What’s really amazing is that Barack Obama’s long association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a black liberation preacher and one who outspokenly condemned the U.S.A., barely put a dent in his run for the presidency.

As for Mormons, many have served honorably in high office since the days of President Eisenhower. It’s time to get off that hobby horse. If anything, I am greatly relieved that for all the talk of flip-flopping, there has not been a whisper of personal scandal regarding Romney. Compare that, please, to Bill Clinton.

At some point, likely after the South Carolina and Florida primaries, Republicans of all descriptions are going to conclude they have a good candidate in Mitt Romney. The party which has generally been run by white shoe, East Coast elites and a healthy mixture of Texas oilmen, has got to get serious about tearing Barack Obama to bits.

This election is not about finding “another” messiah to lead the nation. It’s about electing—frankly—anyone other than Obama and, hopefully, someone who has demonstrated real executive competence in public office and private enterprise.

In Congress the Republican leadership is elaborately polite in their discourse, but the election will not be won in the Capitol Building. It will be won in 50 States whose population has been taking a beating in a terrible economy made worse by the profligate spending and borrowing of the worst President this nation has ever known. By the time November rolls around, I want them to be mad as hell and it will be the party’s job to make sure that happens.

If there was any doubt where President Barack Obama’s ideological heart lies, yesterday he let it be known loud and clear in a wide-ranging speech in Osawatomie, Kansas. President Obama is at his core a dyed-in-the-wool progressive who sees the federal government as the answer to all of America’s problems. And he is charging full steam ahead on this far-left course toward Election Day 2012, despite the total failure of his big-government policies and an American people who have flatly rejected the message he is trying to sell.

True to form, President Obama yesterday did what he does best: He delivered a flowery speech and flexed his rhetorical muscles. It’s a talent that won him the presidency, but unfortunately it hasn’t won the future for the American people. And that’s because the President’s underlying philosophy is terribly flawed. After three years of a massive expansion of government, the enactment of Obamacare, hundreds of billions of dollars in failed stimulus spending, government ownership of General Motors, a Big Labor/pro-unionization onslaught, threats of even higher taxation, the promulgation of more unnecessary regulations, and a total failure to confront the entitlement challenge, the verdict is in on President Obama’s record and the soundness of his statist, progressive philosophy. Deficits are soaring, the economy is stagnant, 13.3 million Americans are out of work, and job growth is flat. Not surprisingly, the President’s speech did not touch on those facts.

Instead of confronting the reality of America under his watch, President Obama hearkened back to the days of Bull Moose progressive Theodore Roosevelt, citing him as his model of good governance, quoting his 1910 “New Nationalism” speech and calling for “fairness” in America–along with more infrastructure spending, more federal education programs, more regulations, and higher taxation on job creators to redistribute wealth and pay for his big government programs. And in order to raise the temperature of his rhetoric–and inflame the passions of his audience–the President fell back to his class warfare ways, demonizing the haves in order to win over the have-nots while painting a picture of an America where “unfairness” reigns and opportunity cannot be found.

Matthew Spalding, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, explains why President Obama’s reliance on class warfare and his perverted view of “fairness” is so contrary to what America is really about:

There are no class distinctions in America. That’s why Steve Jobs could start an adopted child in a broken home, start Apple in a garage and become a billionaire eight times over. The real distinction here is caused by the rise of a new governing class of experts, bureaucrats and political elites who insist on ruling us to enforce “fairness” rather than letting us govern ourselves under the rule of law.

Indeed, the new fairness inevitably leads to bureaucratic favoritism, inequalities based on special interests and undue political influence. The real class warfare, as Paul Ryan argued in his recent speech at The Heritage Foundation, is caused by “a class of governing elites, exploiting the politics of division to pick winners and losers in our economy and determine our destinies for us.”

Ironically, the President’s conception of America–that it is a land of no opportunity–stands in stark contrast to his own personal story, which he even trumpeted in his speech. Barack Obama came from meager beginnings and now sits in the Oval Office. There are countless stories of other Americans who have risen and found success on their own merit in this fertile land. But speaking to America’s rugged individualism and the notion of achieving success without the helping hand of the government would not serve President Obama’s progressive agenda. In his world, the government is the giver of all things, the defender of the middle class, and the architect of prosperity. Likewise, success is not something to be championed but to be demagogued in the name of the expansion of the state.

Over the past three years, we have seen the President articulate many ideas and cloak himself in many different philosophies. Of late, he has even called himself a tax-cutter and posed as a deficit hawk, all while calling for massive amounts of new spending. But with yesterday’s speech, he has emerged in his truest incarnation–a hard-line progressive to the core. The speech fits perfectly with reports that the Obama 2012 campaign has come to the realization that it will lose white blue-collar voters by large margins and is concentrating instead on cobbling together a coalition of culture elites and racial minorities. The abandonment of the middle class–or, rather, the fact that the middle class has abandoned him–puts in context this latest incarnation of the President as he prepares to run next year.

This is not the way to lead America to prosperity, to stand the economy on its feet, or to put the millions of unemployed Americans back to work. Rather than make government bigger and more intrusive, now is the time to make it smaller and more responsible so that entrepreneurs can achieve what Washington cannot manufacture: new jobs, new ideas, and a better America for future generations. But that America is quite different from the one President Obama envisions.

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